Sep 2, 2021
How to cultivate a captive audience Part II: Think/Feel/Do
Want your audience to love you? First, you have to know these 3 things.
For many of us, the most terrifying part of public speaking is not knowing how our audience will react. Will they give us a standing ovation? Have us thrown from the building? Whip out their credit cards and buy our line of $5,000 wifi-connected blenders???
We can never predict 100%. But we can give ourselves a huge advantage simply by knowing how we want them to react and breaking down the steps to get there.
And, we can start with a simple audience mapping exercise from our recent Speechless+ live coaching session, called “THINK/FEEL/DO.”
But first, the age-old question…
Why does a talk “bomb?”
Ultimately, “bombing” is a disconnect between the speaker and the audience. The crowd just isn’t “pickin’ up what you’re putin’ down;” they’re not “smellin’ what you’re steppin’ in,” they’re not — well, you get the picture…
The disconnect between speaker and audience usually has two root causes:
- The robot: We forget who we’re speaking to
- The rambler: We forget why we’re speaking to them
“The robot” forgets to address their audience in their content or just in the moment — instead plowing through a talk without pausing to check-in, read the room, or adjust their message. “The rambler” might be engaging and personable, but they’ve lost sight of their objective, leaving the audience wondering why they just sat through a 60-minute meeting about… wait, what was it about again?
Let’s start with the former:
First, define your audience
Keep it to one sentence, but be specific: instead of “wedding attendees” or “coworkers,” say “50 of mike and Sarah’s fun friends… and their uptight families or “the overzealous IT team kicking off our team’s security implementation.”
Identifying things like group size and some brief context will help you shape the tone and word choice of your talk (read our deep-dive on tone + list of 155 tone words to get you started).
Then, outline your objective
What do you want your audience to “think, feel, and do?”
In marketing or sales, we might refer to it as a “call to action.” But, focusing on the action only captures one piece of the puzzle (think: the salesperson so zoned in on “closing” that they neglect to make the client feel heard and lose the sale in the process); we also need to consider the audience thoughts and feelings that will get us there.
Try mapping your next talk or presentation onto this template:
The Point:
As speakers, we can set ourselves up for success by defining what that looks like. First, by identifying our audience and then outlining our objective, including the thoughts, feelings, and actions we want our talk to inspire.
And, maybe, just maybe, we’ll sell a blender or two in the process.
For more on-demand public speaking training and free group coaching, explore our digital platform Speechless Plus here!
